


The Glimmerverse

by beforetheymakemerun



Category: The Rolling Stones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beforetheymakemerun/pseuds/beforetheymakemerun
Summary: Mick gets a shock when his cleaning lady finds a baby left on his doorstep. Mick is scared. Keith keeps taking naps. Charlie and Marianne act as voices of reason. Fluffy stuff.
Relationships: Mick Jagger/Keith Richards
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	The Glimmerverse

**Author's Note:**

> Over at the Queen fandom there was a whole AU called the Lillyverse where Freddie and Brian adopt a daughter. I always loved those fics and wanted to write one where Mick and Keith potentially adopted a baby. Might continue this or might not.

When the doorbell rang at 6:30 in the morning, Keith ignored it. He’d buried his head under a pillow, and he was at Mick’s flat, anyway, so this wasn’t his responsibility. It rang again, and again, and Keith flapped a hand to the space beside him, feeling for another body. He came down on empty bed, and sat up. He rubbed his eyes, shaking his foggy brain to the present. Sun came weakly through the window. Just past sunrise. Which meant, yes, of course, Mick was out jogging. Mick could never sit still, had been taught to never dally by his gym teacher father (Physical Education, Mick always called it), but especially before a tour, Mick exercised relentlessly.

The doorbell sounded again. The doorbell rang so constantly at Mick’s old place on Cheyenne Walk that Keith gave him a new one as a gag birthday gift: the opening bars to “Satisfaction.” That, of course, became dreadfully more annoying after the first few novel times. Mick had pretended to love it, but "confessed" he lost it when he’d moved. Keith understood. The doorbell was now regular and boring.  
Keith stood and found a pair of jeans on the floor, confident they were his. Mick never left clothes on the floor. Which was why Keith suspected the person at the door was Mick’s housekeeper, Mrs. Beeker. It was odd, though, because she had a key and was instructed to let herself in, and to not disturb Keith. She cleaned the bedroom last, only once Keith was awake and shooed from the room by a post-run, refreshed Mick. Keith found a shirt, too. He pulled the drape back from the window. Yes, it was Mrs. Beeker, holding a small package in her arms. 

Keith opened the front door so quickly that Mrs. Beeker took a step back. “Keith!”

Keith raised his eyebrows. “Mrs. Beeker.” He waited for the explanation: such an airhead, left the key at home. Though to his knowledge she never had before.  
Her eyes grew wide, and she looked first into his, then down to the package. It was not a package, but a bundle. Keith still didn’t get it. Then the bundle started to cry.

***

Mick paced the room. Keith leaned against the kitchen counter. Mrs. Beeker sat at the breakfast nook, holding the baby. Keith and Mick had never spent so much time in her presence. She took a moment to observe them; not for any malicious intent, but just because she hardly saw her clients up close. She knew Keith by the dirty clothes on the bedroom floor, the hair in the shower drain, the half-drunk mugs of coffee all over the house that stained Mick’s china with dark rings. Mick never said so, of course, but it was obvious who she was really cleaning up after. The baby grand hadn’t a speck of dust on it, while the guitar case brimmed with rubbish. 

Mrs. Beeker knew these fellows were supposedly famous. She wasn’t supposed to make a big thing of it. “Keep it on the down-low,” Mick’s manager had said, and she hadn’t ever heard that phrase before, but she got the idea. She’d confided to her friend, Margie, who shrugged. “Who?” “They’re in a rock band, the Rolling something.” The friend looked blank and asked for more tea.  
Seeing them now, she understood why Keith was over so often. They were simple opposites, dependent on each other. Without Mick, no restless energy, no concern, no drive. Without Keith, no incessant patience, no loving detail, no freedom.

“Tell us again,” said Mick, stopping before her.

Mrs. Beeker whetted her lips. “Found her on the steps, with the note I gave you. She was tucked in that little box. And I didn’t want to come in and wake you in the bedroom, so I rang the doorbell. You were out for your run—”

“Yes, yes,” Mick said, already impatient.

“It’s a real baby,” Keith muttered to no one in particular.

“Yes it’s a real baby!” Mick snapped. He paced anew.

“I’m making coffee,” Keith said, sauntering from the room. The boy never strode, never walked with purpose. He glided and drifted. She saw him float out of the bedroom each Thursday afternoon once cajoled by Mick.

With Keith momentarily gone, Mick stopped before Mrs. Beeker again.

“What do I do?” he asked, so earnestly it broke her heart a little.

“I don’t know, lovie. Call a bobby? Call your mum?”

He shook his head at that. He still held the small square note in his left hand. _Mick, she’s yours. Very sorry to leave her here, but I know she will have a much better life with you. Xx J.S._

Mrs. Beeker imagined her son calling to say a baby, his baby, had been left on his porch steps. She knew she’d do everything she could to help. Her James would never mean any harm. But she suspected a  
boy who had turned out so focused, so driven, did not have parents so warm or welcoming.

“Call the police?” she asked again.

Again, Mick shook his head. “Media circus.” He pivoted, then turned toward her again. “I’ll call Charlie.”

***

When Charlie arrived, the baby was still in Mrs. Beekers arms. She offered the bundle to him and he accepted, rocking the infant gently. Charlie thought many things. _It was only a matter of time. And no one but the cleaning lady has even held her? Why me? Bloody hell. She is beautiful._ Charlie kissed her tiny head on instinct, just has he had with his own baby daughter, seven years ago. Know anyone named JS? he wanted to ask Mick, but didn’t. It wouldn’t help anything. At the moment, going down the paternity route felt pointless and petty. This was a real live, breathing child.

Mrs. Beeker excused herself, and Charlie sat next to Mick on the couch. Mick looked away, out the window, anywhere but the baby.

“How are you doing?” Charlie asked.

Mick finally looked at him. “Bloody horrified.” His eyes were wide, wild.

Charlie nodded, waiting.

Mick looked over his shoulder checking, Charlie thought, that Keith was still gone. “I mean, fuck me, I don’t even know who it could have been.”

“On tour,” Charlie said. Not a question. Nine months ago Mick and Keith were still hooking up intermittently, still thinking it was a secret from everyone, though they’d forgotten that everyone else in the band was quiet and observant where they were brash. Charlie knew first, of course. He’d found them together the morning he’d barged into Mick’s room to wake him before they missed their flight. It was unlike Mick to oversleep, and made him concerned enough to think Mick might be sick—another nearly unheard-of event. What he found was Mick deeply asleep (Mick later said he always set the alarm clock, but had that night been preoccupied), with Keith beside him, Keith’s arm draped over Mick’s bare back. It wasn’t like Mick and Keith hadn’t shared a bed before—they’d all shared beds at various times in various configurations for various reasons (poverty, cold, bone-tiredness, laziness), but this was different. Charlie felt it in the air. Soundlessly, he crept from the room, gently pressed the door shut, then waited a minute, and knocked like a policeman raiding a party. Within seconds, Mick opened the door, a sheet wrapped round him like a cocoon. “Charlie!” “Running late, mate,” was all Charlie had said. Charlie told no one, but Bill found out, of course he did. Bill was more often looking through a camera lens than his own eyes. He spotted them in the pool. Mick Taylor was the last to know. Micky got drunk and stoned with the glimmer twins, but somehow maintained an aura of innocence that was real, not pre-conceived. He caught their hands brushing too long, and his eyes flew to Charlie’s. Charlie shook his head a fraction. Later, Charlie corralled Mick and Keith to the other end of the plane and quietly explained that everyone knew and no one cared. They would keep the secret. Now could the two of them stop being so damn enigmatic?

Mick nodded slowly, bringing Charlie back to present. “We weren’t officially together then, you know.”

Charlie nodded.

“And I wasn’t really… seeing people…”

Charlie wanted to roll his eyes.

“But sometimes, you know…” Mick trailed on.

“Yes, Mick, I know,” Charlie intoned. Though he was only two years Mick’s senior, Charlie often felt he was Mick’s father, a generation older. Having children did that to you, perhaps, but Charlie felt he’d been born a generation older, or maybe Mick was born permanently immature. 

“So what do I do?” Mick asked, eyes still wide. 

Charlie sighed. He brought the baby to his nose. “You know I never really believed babies had a smell.”

“I have a younger brother,” Mick said, as if this taught him everything he’d ever needed to know about babies. 

“And yet you had to call in an expert.”

Mick was too distraught to form a comeback. 

“Well,” Charlie sighed, “did you ever want to have kids?”

Again, Mick turned to him, eyes huge and wide mouth open. “How am I s’posed to know?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said, truthfully. “Did you ever think about it when you were little?”

“Did you?”

“Sure.”

“You always thought you’d be a dad?” Mick finally lowered his eyes to the baby. She lay fast asleep in Charlie’s arms. Mick raised a hesitant hand to her blanket, which was soft pink. He rested a finger  
there, nothing more. 

“We all thought we were going to be dads.” Charlie thought of Bill, married with a son before he even joined the Stones. They’d all thought the same things as boys, Charlie was sure. School, national service, marriage, and children weren’t even a choice, but destiny.

“I didn’t,” Mick said, delicately touching the baby’s forehead.

***

After several bad cups of coffee--he still didn’t know how to properly use a coffee maker--Keith drew the drapes, removed his clothes, and got back into bed. As coffee never had much effect on him, he immediately fell asleep. What felt like days later, but must have been hours, he awoke. The room was afternoon-murkey. He woke because the door opened, a line of light falling onto his face. A shadow crossed the light. Mick sank down on the bed beside him. He moved rigidly across the mattress, his stomach clenched. When Keith raised his head, he saw Mick held the baby. She slept on. Keith rubbed his eyes. 

“What happened?” he asked. 

Mick held a finger to his lips. “I sent everyone home.”

“Why?” Keith hissed. 

“I couldn’t keep them here forever.”

“You know fuck-all about babies.”

“You know fuck-all. I have a brother.”

“Who’s, what, two years younger?”

Mick eased himself down next to Keith, laying the baby between them on the bed. Did babies really cry this little? Keith didn’t know. He thought of them as incessant and catastrophic. This one seemed  
quite calm. It was true he was an only child, a fact Mick lorded over him. As if it was the one thing that made his childhood more difficult or legitimate than Keith’s. Keith often reminded him he’d played in bombed-out rubble for fun as a child. But it was not like he’d never seen or held a baby before. 

“Three and a half years,” Mick said quietly.

“Fuck you.”

Mick cracked a smile. This was Keith’s favorite version of him. The one that was soft and silly and self-deprecating. A rare version of Mick in the public eye, but one he shared with Keith.  
“Did you think you’d be a dad?” Mick asked. 

It took a moment for the words to hit, and then Keith sat bolt upright. “What?”

“Shh!” Mick placed a light and protective hand over the baby’s stomach. She stirred but didn’t wake. 

Keith stared hard into Mick’s face. “Mick. What are you saying.”

Mick held up his hands. “I’m just asking.”

“Asking, what, if I’m ready to be a dad? The father of your child? Don’t be crazy, Mick. For fuck’s sake.” Keith looked around for his clothes. Somehow they weren’t on the floor anymore. “Where the fuck are my clothes?” he hissed. 

“In the fucking drawers, Keith.”

Keith gave an angry yank on the top sheet, pulling it free from the mattress, causing the duvet to slide to the floor. He wrapped it around himself like a toga, and headed for the door.

He collapsed in the study, forehead to palms. What the fuck? A few hours ago Mick wouldn't look at the kid, now he was asking Keith about fatherhood? As if this made sense? As if that was something Keith seemed capable of?

Keith had never wanted anything as much as he'd wanted music. He wanted to listen and play. Sometimes he felt music enter directly into his blood. Sometimes he imagined eating it, as if he could ingest an LP whole. He'd had relationships and flings, sure, but music brought him back. And then there was Mick, who'd been there all along. Mick and music weren't so dissimilar, it turned out. They got him up in the morning, made him focus, made him want. Music and Mick were enough. He hardly thought beyond the next week. He'd learned not to. Everyone said they'd be a fad, popular for no more than a year, two at most, and here they were. 1975 and people lined up to see them, filled stadiums. It was all too much and too good, no sense in planning for a future of possible disappointment. There was only now, and the vibrations you could make. 

Keith did what he always did. He drank another bad cup of coffee, lay down, slipped large headphones over his ears, and turned up the sound. 

***

Mick stared at the baby. She was absolutely perfect. People assumed boys knew nothing about babies, but that wasn’t true in Mick’s case. Even though he followed his father’s directives--going out to jog, lift weights, and perform other strength-building exercises--he loved being in the kitchen with his mother and baby Chris. When he was young, family called him Chris’s “second mother,” a term Joe Jagger loathed. But Mick only heard it as a compliment. He pushed Chris in the pram, fed him by bottle, both of them propped up on the couch. One day, Joe finally put his foot down. “You’re an eight-year-old boy, go outdoors! Go get messy!” He slammed the front door and locked it. After that, Mick stopped being quite so attentive to Chris. He found other boys in the neighborhood to throw stones and jump in mud puddles with. It felt he’d forgotten all the baby stuff until now, until Charlie had asked. Then it came flooding back. He never bothered much thinking about being a father. He wasn’t sure why. When he was with Marrianne, there was Nicholas, a surrogate son, and Mick loved him dearly. He thought he’d been good with the boy. Marrianne always said so. Marrianne. 

Mick eased himself to the other side of the bed, and lifted the phone there. He still knew her number, though he’d never tell Keith this. She answered. “Hello?”

Mick was startled. He’d reached for the phone without thinking, almost like they were still together, in the careless way he used to call her. “Uh, hi,” he stumbled. “Would you, um, be able to come over?”

“Who’s this?”

“Oh. It’s Mick.”

“Mick?”

“Mick Jagger,” he said, then felt immeasurably stupid. 

“Not Mickey Rooney?”

“No,” he said. She was playing with him, but Mick had never been good at such banter. Keith would know what to say. He always had a drawling retort, something it took no effort to form, something to make everyone laugh. Mick got flustered, though he’d never let on, of course. He passed it off as boredom, a trait the press loved to hate. 

“What’s up Mick?”

“Do you think you could come over?”

“Come over where?”

“Stargroves.”

“What’s going on?”

“Everything’s alright. Or, well, something’s happened.”

“Is Keith okay?”

Marrianne was the first person he’d properly told about Keith. The band had found out before he’d had a chance to say anything. 

“Yes, yes. Not that.” Though at the moment, Keith was mad and sulking in the den, he was sure. He waited, but Marrianne stayed quiet. “Can you come?”

She waited until he asked again. 

***

“So whose is it?” Marrianne asked. She knew Mick didn’t know, but she couldn’t help the jab. _You slept with so many people you had a baby with someone you don’t even know._ Of course this had happened, it was only a matter of time. Though part of her felt sorry for him, because she still cared for Mick, had shared so much with him, a larger part felt relieved that this was not her problem. A few years ago, it would have been, but now she stood outside the ring of drama that surrounded him constantly. 

Still, disheveled Mick sitting before her, holding a tiny baby, hurt her heart. He had been amazing with Nicholas. When they had a party, he was most often seated on the floor or the grass next to her small son, digging in the sandbox, pushing a wooden train set. He bounced Nicholas on his hip, or raced him down the street when the little boy got impatient. 

“I don’t know whose it is,” Mick said, with a tone that said, _Obviously_. 

“So what are you going to do with her?”

He looked up at her, and she knew. The way his eyes were soft, pleading. He wanted her to say that he could keep her.

“Oh, Jesus, Mick.”

“I think it could be the best thing.”

“And what about Keith?”

“She’s my baby.”

Marianne rolled her eyes. “Don't be ridiculous. Do you love Keith?”

“Of course,” Mick said imperiously. Sometimes, when he was very worn down, half asleep, or close to tears, he’d actually tell her what was going on in that peculiar brain of his, but most of the time he preferred to act like he didn’t have feelings. 

“Don’t bullshit me.” She reached in her purse, withdrew her silver cigarette case, and carefully unsnapped it with her long-nailed fingers. Mick didn’t offer a lighter so she dug around further until she found a silver one matching the case. 

Mick signed, melting a bit into the chair. “I’m scared to really ask him, and I’m scared of how much this means to me, you know?" 

Marianne nodded. "A child needs a stable home, and attention, and a lot of care. You need to think through what it really means. And then if you can do it, you do it." 

Mick nodded slowly. Then he sighed, and held the baby out to Marianne. "Will you hold her for a moment so I can talk to Keith?"

***

Keith felt a pressure at the end of the couch, and opened one eye. Mick sat there, baby-less. He motioned for Keith to remove the headphones. "What's up?" Keith asked, trying to sound neither cold nor conciliatory. 

"Keith."

"Yes."

"Come here." Mick patted his leg. Keith wavered for a moment, then let his body slump forward, his head landing on Mick's thigh. Mick brushed Keith's bangs from his eyes, tucking his fingers again and again behind Keith's ear. Keith waited. He wasn't so much mad about Mick fathering a child. They hadn't been serious then. They hadn't been serious for years after their first encounter, in the back of a van in the sticks of England, huddled together for warmth. He could still remember Mick's mouth on his, how shocked he'd been, how soft Mick's skin was. After that, they sometimes hooked up, after a show, late at night. A drunk Keith would knock on Mick's hotel door, or Mick would give him a look over dinner, or their bodies would brush too closely in the hall. Keith didn't think of it as serious until he didn't want to do anything but stay up late with Mick, talking about the show, about life, about the children they'd been mere kilometers from each other. 

It was after a particularly good show nine months ago when Keith, approaching Mick’s room, saw Mick fall into the arms of a beautiful and laughing girl, realized he cared about Mick seeing other people. It was three months before he could say anything. 

They were in bed, on tour, somewhere far from England and far from anything. Mick’s eyes fluttered closed, a sure sign he’d be asleep in seconds. Keith gulped. He said the words so quietly Mick made him repeat them: "I don't want you to see other people." Mick gazed back at him, and Keith was stunned by his beauty, and sure he'd blown it. "I was waiting for you to say something," Mick said. "Come again?" asked Keith. "You're so painfully monogamous." Mick smiled in that way he did, the way that made him look like a normal boy Keith might have met in art college. Mick could do that--remind him they were just two people. "I was waiting for you to ask." He leaned in to kiss Keith, and Keith's body seized. Without thinking he grabbed hold of Mick, his hands sliding from shoulders to torso, squeezing, as if anchoring him to the earth, holding him safe from the cliff edge. He needed to hold him there, keep him. "I'm here," Mick whispered. "I'm not going anywhere." 

Now Keith mumbled into Mick’s leg: “You want me to be a bloody dad?”

“What?” Mick asked. 

“We don’t even know what we’re doing,” Keith said, reaching for Mick’s hand. He held tight to the warm palm. 

“How do you mean?”

“You’re my boyfriend?”

“Of course.”

“Do we live together?” Keith owned Redlands, but he’d been spending less and less time there. At the moment he hadn’t been back for two weeks, since Mick had started doing his laundry. “Isn’t that what Mrs. Beeker is for?” Keith asked, finding shirts and boxers folded into neat squares on his side of the bed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mick said. Keith didn’t know what that meant, but he accepted the cleaned garments. 

“I don’t know,” Mick said, playing with Keith’s fingers. “Do we?”

They shared a look. Mick’s eyes were wide, as if letting in all light, all possibilities. “Do you want to?” he asked, finally. 

Keith looked around the room, as if noticing it for the first time. Did he want to live here? It was true he seldom went home. When he did, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He sat on his couch and wondered why he’d bought this couch, this house, what life he could have been imagining for himself. He hadn’t been thinking. He bought a house because when you got money, you bought a house. He bought furniture because a house needed furniture. His rooms were still underfurnished, unlike Mick’s, which were lavish.

“Sell the house?” he asked, dreamily.

“Well, not if you don’t want to--”

“No.” Keith nodded. “I’m never there. I’m always here.”

Mick smiled slowly. “Yeah?”

Keith felt a warmth spread through his stomach, out to his fingers. Mick was asking him to move in, asking him to be closer, when all Keith ever got was his restless energy. Mick was conventional but never content, whereas Keith was content but unconventional. 

Keith was about to reply when Marianne walked into the room, rocking the baby in her arms. Without speaking, she held the baby out to Keith. Keith sat up and took her, unthinking. He’d held babies before, younger cousins and such, Charlie’s daughter at a party once. He was always scared to hold them. When Charlie saw his daughter in Keith’s arms (someone who didn’t know Keith very well had passed her off), he dashed to Keith’s side and took her back. Keith didn’t blame him, but was embarrassed. Now he looked down at the baby’s soft fine hair, her eyelids delicate and thin. She was half of Mick; he swore he could tell in the shape of her tiny mouth. 

When he looked up, Marianne and Mick were gone. He didn’t worry about them. He’d had a drunk night with Marianne when she spilled everything on Mick (of course he’d go to his grave with Mick none the wiser). She told him about their rows, about how she thought she could love him and clung to him, but when he was gone she realized it had never been what she wished it was. He was great with Nicholas, which was great for her. He was sometimes just who she wanted him to be. Keith understood that. At the time--it was a year or two ago--Mick was out with a new girl every night, Keith sullen and alone. Did he sleep with Marianne to get back at Mick? No. He slept with her because they had a connection that night, spurned by the same person. “You’re better for him,” Marianne said. “You get him better than I do. You’re patient.” Keith said he didn’t know, he didn’t care. But he did. When Mick came back to him, Keith tumbled again, helpless. 

He looked back to the sleeping child, and something in him softened, then dissolved. She was new and whole, perfect and beautiful. She was half of Mick.

***

Mick returned to find Keith gently shushing the baby. He stood in the doorway, watching the way Keith’s body folded around her. He looked scared, dazed, but purposeful. 

Keith looked up. “Okay,” he said.


End file.
